Excerpts from an account by Karl Rove -- retelling what wartime comrades of McCain have related to him

Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple." The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place. Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complemented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

Another story I heard over dinner with the Days involved Mr. McCain serving as one of the three chaplains for his fellow prisoners. At one point, after being shuttled among different prisons, Mr. Day had found himself as the most senior officer at the Hanoi Hilton. So he tapped Mr. McCain to help administer religious services to the other prisoners. Today, Mr. Day, a very active 83, still vividly recalls Mr. McCain's sermons. "He remembered the Episcopal liturgy," Mr. Day says, "and sounded like a bona fide preacher." One of Mr. McCain's first sermons took as its text Luke 20:25 and Matthew 22:21, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's." Mr. McCain said he and his fellow prisoners shouldn't ask God to free them, but to help them become the best people they could be while serving as POWs. It was Caesar who put them in prison and Caesar who would get them out. Their task was to act with honor.

Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours. The torture so badly busted up his shoulders that to this day Mr. McCain can't raise his arms over his head. One night, a Vietnamese guard loosened his bonds, returning at the end of his watch to tighten them again so no one would notice. Shortly after, on Christmas Day, the same guard stood beside Mr. McCain in the prison yard and drew a cross in the sand before erasing it. Mr. McCain later said that when he returned to Vietnam for the first time after the war, the only person he really wanted to meet was that guard.

Mr. Day recalls with pride Mr. McCain stubbornly refusing to accept special treatment or curry favor to be released early, even when gravely ill. Mr. McCain knew the Vietnamese wanted the propaganda victory of the son and grandson of Navy admirals accepting special treatment. "He wasn't corruptible then," Mr. Day says, "and he's not corruptible today."

News.com.au - THE prime suspect in yesterday's callous killing of a Frankston mother was sentenced to death in 1968 for the stabbing murder of a 17-year-old girl. Robinson's death sentence for murdering the teenager was commuted in 1969, and he was released on parole in 1983. In 1991 he pleaded guilty to 14 charges of handling over $100,000 worth of stolen goods. He received a two-year sentence with a minimum of 18 months.

Actor Gil Tucker - who played a policeman in the popular TV drama Cop Shop - gave evidence on Robinson's behalf, saying Robinson's life had been ''a great tragedy'' and that he had made a "made a great fist of having a go at it" after being released for the 1968 murder. Detectives are continuing to hunt for Robinson who they describe as "armed and dangerous" more than 30 hours after he blasted the mother of two to death with a shotgun yesterday.

Yeah, a great tragedy, look at the posies, kumbaya, hold hands. Because he was spared all those years ago, combined with our useless gun control laws, this woman is dead, two children are orphaned, someone has lost their daughter, their mother, their friend and it could have been prevented. Who knows who else this scumbag is going to kill next before he is caught. And what happens when they catch him, oh yeah, he'll still live because we don't have the stomach to kill evil scumbags like this. Hopefully he'll be sentenced to life never to be released but don't put your house on it. I wouldn't be surprised if some criminal coddling moron will be whining to give him another chance. I wouldn't be surprised if the courts only find him guilty of manslaughter or insanity or use some other useless excuse to minimise the time he'll spend in jail. Remember this folks, remember it well, for every scumbag deserving of the chair or the needle that we let live.

Wall Street Journal - Most commentators who oppose capital punishment assert that an execution has no deterrent effect on future crimes. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the death penalty, when carried out, has an enormous deterrent effect on the number of murders. More precisely, our recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year.

There seem to be very few defenders of comprehensive freedom of speech. The Left defend their right to say their stuff and attack the rights of others while Christians attack "obscene" speech and often lose in defending their own speech. The end result is that everybody feels somewhat restricted in what they can say. Even I do, libertarian though I am. Just to make sure that Google does not take any of my sites down, I always use the form "n*gger" if I have to discuss that word, for instance. I must say that I do not really understand why that small change -- which fools nobody -- makes such a big difference, but it seems to.

And what are we to make of the brave conservative bloggers at Pajamas Media? They have just expelled Gates of Vienna from their organization for using the "G-word": "genocide". GoV is a site that is devoted to defending Western civilization against Muslim attack and they frequently warn against what could happen in the future. One of the scenarios that they warned against recently was the eruption of outright war between Muslims and others in Europe, with one possible outcome of that being genocide of Muslims. The entire aim of GoV is of course to avert any such war by taking action now to defend our freedoms from attack.

GoV was quite clearly, therefore, NOT arguing for a genocide against Muslims -- quite the opposite. It aims to prevent that. But the mention of the G-word in the same sentence as a reference to Muslims was just impermissible speech to Pajamas media. What wimps and wusses they are! They have surrendered. They are doing the job of the Muslims and their Leftist allies for them. I doubt that I will ever again read or link to any of their sites. You will note that I have not done so here.

GoV have themselves been very magnanimous about the matter and have said that the Bananas in Pajamas had every right to do what they did. Undoubtedly they do but what does it say about their character or the value of reading them? Do drop by at GoV and give them what support you can.

"The BBC is facing a High Court challenge over its decision to censor a party political broadcast in the run-up to Thursday's local elections. A Christian party has begun legal action after the corporation insisted on changes to a short film in which the party voiced opposition to the building of Europe's biggest mosque next to the site of the 2012 Olympics.

Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamic missionary group behind the 75 million pound Abbey Mills mosque, opposes inter-faith dialogue and preaches that non-Muslims are an evil and corrupting influence. One of its British advocates has said that it aims to rescue Muslims from the culture and civilisation of Jews and Christians by creating "such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta".

The Christian Choice election broadcast would have described Tablighi Jamaat as "a separatist Islamic group" before welcoming that some "moderate Muslims" were opposed to the mosque complex.

Alan Craig, the party's candidate in the London mayoral election, also on Thursday, said that he was forced to change the wording at the insistence of lawyers at the BBC and ITV, which will also feature in the court action.

The BBC refused to accept "separatist" - the corporation asked for "controversial" instead - and barred the use of "moderate Muslims" because the phrase implied that Tablighi Jamaat was less than moderate.

As the BBC is compulsorily supported by the taxpayer (and even some non-taxpayers are made to cough up), one would hope it had some obligation to speak the truth rather than cover it up. Silly of me to think that, I guess.

Supermarkets must accept being libelled?

The British literary luvvies are venting their hatred of big business:

"A group of Britain's leading authors has accused Tesco of using "deeply chilling" tactics to silence its critics. Nick Hornby and Mark Haddon are among the writers who have signed a letter in The Times today condemning the supermarket for prosecuting a Thai business leader for making a speech that decried Tesco's expansion. If the supermarket is successful Jit Siratranont could be jailed.

Hornby and Haddon - together with Marina Lewycka, the author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, and Deborah Moggach, who wrote Tulip Fever - have also put their names to a longer open letter arguing that a criminal libel prosecution and two civil actions against journalists represent a breach of their human rights....

A spokesman for the supermarket said that Tesco stood by its Thai subsidiary, which would have informed its superiors in Britain of its actions. "All three of these actions follow a sustained period of attack on Tesco Lotus in Thailand. It is our fervent wish to reach agreement. We are seeking a public apology. It is very regrettable that we have had to take legal action in Thailand. We had hoped that the individuals concerned would apologise for the false and highly damaging allegations they had made about our business over a sustained period of time but despite numerous attempts to get them to set the record straight, this has not happened.

el universal - The Venezuelan Ministry of Housing plans to build socialist cities this year. Progress in this field is expected to be made under international agreements. Minister of Housing Edith Gómez pointed out that the first phase of a program to build socialist cities is slated to start under an agreement with Belarus. She added that a number of Ministry specialists would travel to Belarus to learn about the construction of such cities.

The creation of socialist cities has been planned under social welfare program Misión Villanueva, which is focused on developing town-building projects. Under Misión Villanueva, socialist towns are intended "to promote the endogenous potential and prioritize social economy." Therefore, small- and medium-size businesses, cooperatives, family businesses, micro-businesses, and any other form of communitarian associations have to be promoted.

I call upon all those lefties who wish the western world would abandon this wretched capitalism that's infected us for social justice. I call upon all those America haters and all those yearning for social justice, yes social justice! I call upon all of you to pack your bags, there is a glorious socialist empire utopia being set up in South America. Your dreams are but a flight away, the glorious Hugo will bring heaven on earth, he will finally bring social justice to you who have been oppressed and trampled upon by the capitalist pigs. Here is your opportunity, to finally stick it to the filthy capitalist bourgeoisie, you can build your shining beacon of hope, hope for social justice that millions, no billions around the world yearn for. Why waste your precious time with us, we are lost, lost I tell you, to the greed, the consumerism, colonialism, imperialism and all that. Go forth, join the proletariat and build your shining cities of social justice [have I said this enough times?] and perhaps our children will follow you when they tire of all this capitalist slavery & drudgery.

He was probably lucky the media were present. He should sue the pants off the Victoria police

A quiet afternoon at home turned into "something from the movies" for Brad Triptree yesterday afternoon when he looked out of his Frankston house. The 22-year-old nurse was sitting at his computer when he heard a police megaphone outside his house. Mr Triptree told the Herald Sun it didn't cross his mind at first that the police were talking to him. "I heard 'Come out of your house' just like they do in the movies, but I didn't know who they were talking to," he said.

"I was nervous as hell when I realised they meant me -- my legs went all shaky. "My name's not Dave -- they were saying something like that, so I knew they had got the wrong person." Police officers apparently mistook Mr Triptree for a suspect involved in the shooting of a Frankston mother of two yesterday morning. Officers pointed guns at Mr Triptree's head and pushed him to the ground outside his apartment complex in front of the media before they let him go.

Mr Triptree, who only moved into his Burns St home three days ago said he hadn't been able to relax since his terrifying ordeal. "I just did what they told me to do," he said. "They were carrying very big guns. "I've never seen guns like that before -- it's the first time I've ever seen a gun. "I'm still shaking now."

Mr Triptree said he was puzzled about why he was a target for police. "They said they had a phone trace from this address but I don't even have a phone connected," he said. "They were just saying that." After police let Mr Triptree go, he said they acted like nothing had happened. "They didn't even say they had made a mistake. "I'm angry, my phone's been going non-stop and I haven't heard a thing from the police. "I haven't got an apology. They let me go back into my house and that was it. "It was as if they were doing me a favour."

Mr Triptree said he could not believe how different he was from the police description of the wanted man he heard on the evening news. "They're looking for a grey-haired guy in his 60s -- I don't look anything like that," he said. "I don't know what they were thinking." After his ordeal, Mr Triptree said he went to his grandparents' home nearby, where he would be staying for the next few days. Mr Triptree said both his mother in Queensland and his elderly grandmother in Frankston had found it hard to believe he had been involved in the drama. Mr Triptree said he did not know any of his neighbours on Burns St, and was considering moving out for a while after yesterday's drama. "I'm definitely not staying here," he said.

By AR - Sydney Morning Herald environment reporter, Ben Cubby ominously writes, "Something strange is happening to our weather." Cubby recently came to our attention when he published statistics purporting to show that Australians each used one tonne of plastic bags per year, or that they were using bags weighing 5.5kg each. The article was belatedly corrected with national plastic bag usage reduced by a factor of 1000, but not before the hyped-up message got through.

Now under the hyped-up headline, "Extreme weather is here to stay," Cubby tells us that, "Sydney has endured the most sodden school holidays in living memory," and, "the longest unbroken spell of April drizzle for 77 years," and, "unseasonably early snow fell in the mountains at the weekend." That's what passes for "extreme" these days. It reminds me of then-ALP leader Kim Beazley telling us how Howard planned to replace his "extreme IR laws" with something, well, "even more extreme".

Experts from the BoM are quoted, "The weather's been anything but normal over the last six months... I can't recall a longer period of sustained weather patterns, of various kinds."

Various kinds of weather! Sodden school hols; extreme April drizzle; hopeful skiers. Cubby sounds like he's channeling Eric Oldthwaite from the Ripping Yarns series: When it weren't drizzlin', it were extreme drizzlin'. What could be causing these remarkable weather patterns?

"A zone of high pressure in the Tasman Sea is the main cause of the record-breaking weather because it has a "blocking" effect, meaning that once a weather pattern arrives, it sticks around for a long while."

Oh well, there you go. Seems that "something strange" can be explained quite easily. Let's hear from another expert:

"This has less to do with global warming and more to do with the natural kinks and dips you see in weather patterns each year."

This was from the co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW. It's pretty tough when even the climate change guy won't get excited about your various kinds of weather patterns.

If one of the outcomes from our extreme weather patterns is more snow, maybe the SMH can continue hammering away at what truly is an enviro-economic scandal:

... the Australian Alpine Club has announced that Australian resorts have the most expensive single-day lift passes in the world. This season a single-day lift pass will set you back $98 at Perisher Blue, $97 at Thredbo and $94 at both Falls Creek and Mount Hotham.

Day passes at Whistler in Canada are $10 cheaper than here in Australia, but you also get a lot more vertical lift for your dollar at Whistler.

"Senator McCain's not here," Bush said of GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain. "He probably wanted to distance himself from me a little bit. You know, he's not alone. Jenna's moving out too."

Bush then referred to scandals that have dogged the campaigns of the two remaining Democratic candidates, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, in explaining their absence: "Hillary Clinton couldn't get in because of sniper fire and Senator Obama's at church."

Jenna is, of course, getting married. One of the other three is going to have to learn their comedy timing for next year's event.

Daily Mail - An Iraqi teenage girl was brutally murdered by her father in an "honour killing" after she fell in love with a British soldier in Basra. Seventeen-year-old Rand Abdel-Qader told her best friend how she had fallen for Paul, a 22-year-old she met at a charity where she worked as a volunteer. The Ministry of Defence was last night trying to trace the soldier. Officials stressed he appeared to have done nothing wrong by befriending the girl. Army insiders said they needed to establish the full facts to help prevent such a tragedy happening again.

Rand Abdel-Qader confided to her closest friend Zeinab that she fell in love the moment she saw the young soldier at the charity for displaced families, and she dreamed of a future with him. On March 16 - two months after Rand last saw Paul - her father Abdel-Qader Ali heard from a friend that his daughter had been seen speaking to the soldier at the charity project. Recalling Rand's murder, her weeping mother Leila Hussein said: "I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life."

Abdel-Qader Ali stood on the girl's throat until she suffocated and then stabbed her, all the time shouting that his honour was being cleansed. He was arrested and released within two hours. Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police said: "The father has very good contacts in the Basra government." Because her family considered her impure, Rand was given only a simple burial. Her uncles spat in her grave to show their disgust. Two weeks later her mother demanded a divorce from Ali, and she now campaigns against honour killings.

Like the British did in India, you honor kill your daughters over something like this, we'll hang you from a crane and when the crows are done with you, we feed the remains to pigs until you swine bloody figure it out. Is that what's needed, do the trees and posts have to sag with the weight of your dead, will that finally get through? They liberated you sons of bitches from the boot-heel of Saddam, they freed you swine from his secret police and mass killings, these infidels from far away who owe you nothing. And yet when your daughter falls in love with one of these men who freed you, you whose wretched, pathetic honor and name could not, you scorn them and you butcher your daughter like a pig. Shame on you Abdel-Qader Ali of Basra and all those who aided you, you sons of a whoring pigs, I hope your end is long and painful, you disgusting, cowardly scum.

A British citizen who converted to Christianity from Islam and then complained to police when locals threatened to burn his house down was told by officers to "stop being a crusader", according to a new report.

Nissar Hussein, 43, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who was born and raised in Britain, converted from Islam to Christianity with his wife, Qubra, in 1996. The report says that he was subjected to a number of attacks and, after being told that his house would be burnt down if he did not repent and return to Islam, reported the threat to the police. It says he was told that such threats were rarely carried out and the police officer told him to "stop being a crusader and move to another place". A few days later the unoccupied house next door was set on fire.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a British human rights organisation whose president is the former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, is calling on the UN and the international community to take action against nations and communities that punish apostasy.

Its report, No Place to Call Home, claims that apostates from Islam are subject to "gross and wideranging human rights abuses". It adds that in countries such as Britain, with large Muslim populations in a Westernised culture, the demand to maintain a Muslim identity is intense. "When identities are precarious, their enforcement will take an aggressive form."

As I get older, I become more convinced that hypocrisy and irony must be as blind as a bat, for those who practice it seem oblivious to the fact that they wear it like a clown suit at a formal wedding; plain as day, badly out of place and amusing to boot. This election year, we have provided with a classic example of this phenomenon, as evidenced by the Bobbsey Twins, Obama and Hillary, from here on referred to simply as OH for practicality, simplicity and accuracy.

To begin with, it has become painfully obvious to many that the more this duo tries to distinguish themselves one from the other, the more we realize that they are two sides of the same coin. They speak of change even as they are no change from typical elitist liberal socialism. They speak of change even as they represent no change from the usual Left strategy of pointing fingers at America instead of at her enemies. They speak of change even as the only thing they seem capable of changing is a tire, and certainly not any tire that would take America anywhere productive.

You can change clothes, you can change diapers and you can change the channel on your television set, but you have a better chance of finding change at a nudist colony than you have of finding it between these two.

Unity is another popular slogan but, if this pair is any indication, the only thing uniting liberals is their individual selfishness and arrogance undermining their collective interest and agenda. If too many cooks spoil the soup, then this soup has become a diluted, jumbled and highly intoxicating superficial stew.

OH speak of unity, brotherhood, sisterhood and neighborhood even as they prove on a daily basis that they need to check under the hood and see why their actions have never met their words. How can we believe two people who claim to be messengers of unity when they cannot even find a way to unify their own party? How can we listen to two people who ask us to hug each other when they seem more likely to slug each other? How can we heed their calls to heal our wounds when they seem more adept at rubbing salt in their own?

"Binge drinking Howard's fault". They have the same problem in Britain so I suppose that is Tony Blair's fault?

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has blamed the former Howard government for the rise in teenage binge drinking. Ms Roxon said the decision to cut taxes on premixed alcoholic drinks eight years ago helped fuel the surge in excessive drinking by young people, particularly teenage girls.

The Rudd government overnight reversed the change, virtually doubling the excise on alcopops from midnight, pushing the cost of the drinks up by between 30 cents and $1.30 a bottle. [Big deal!]

"We can track the change in the way that young women have been drinking these products from the time that the Howard government changed the excise in 2000," Ms Roxon told the Nine Network. "We've seen patterns where it's gone from about 14 per cent of young girls drinking these products up to about 60 per cent. "So, this is an explosion that we think needs to be tackled ... We have a problem that must be turned around and this is the place where we're starting." Ms Roxon said she did not know why the Howard government had cut the excise in the first place.

The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force. "It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," he said at a Pentagon news conference....

In a speech Monday at West Point, Gates said Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons." He said a war with Iran would be "disastrous on a number of levels. But the military option must be kept on the table given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat."

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon to lay out detailed evidence of increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said. The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said. "The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way," Mullen said.

He said recent unrest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had highlighted a "level of involvement" by Iran that had not been understood by the U.S. military previously. "It became very, very visible in ways that we hadn't seen before," he said.

IOL - Special Assignment, a weekly investigative documentary show, planned to broadcast a story on the death of 25-year-old UCT [University of Cape Town, South Africa] graduate Buntu Majalaza, who went to the bush to be initiated into adulthood, but died two weeks later on January 6 from septicaemia because of a botched circumcision. The programme focuses on the dangers of informal initiation schools where some students died. The show was meant to be aired on Tuesday but was retracted two hours before the scheduled time. It is believed that the SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation, state owned broadcaster] refused to allow the show to go on air because of its controversial nature and its potential to offend traditional leaders.

In Black South African culture you only become a man when you are circumcised, like they say in the article, you go with other boys into the bush and they do a couple of other things and eventually your foreskin is cut off and because of poor hygiene like using the same freaking unwashed blade on each boy the above can happen. And because of the stifling cancer of political correctness, brought about and championed by the left, people won't be told about this, so they can change their ways. Because we're not allowed to bloody offend anyone, no matter how backward and stupid, Buntu Majalaza has to die for nothing and more will have to die because of ignorant customs and fancy new-age all-are-equal crap. Here's to hoping one day soon they'll put that dirty, blunt knife to the cancer of Political Correctness!

IHT - In the new nonsmoking France, where café-goers and restaurateurs have made a remarkably quiet transition to the regime of not lighting up indoors, there remains an unexpected pocket of resistance: hookah bars. Hookah bars, which began springing up in France more than a decade ago, became increasingly popular across Europe, both among immigrants from Islamic countries and among the hip student crowd. Helou's union estimates that France had 800 hookah bars before the smoking ban, half of them in Paris or its suburbs, but that perhaps one-third have closed since the ban took effect. The Hookah Professionals' Union has been holding talks with the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy in hopes of finding a solution, so far without success. Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot has shown no inclination to negotiate since declaring in December that there would be no exceptions to the smoking ban. "It's a matter of public health," she said.

Sarko might not be the ideal Conservative, but imagine it was that loony socialist Sego who was running the joint, you can guarantee once they get wind of this, they'd effectively have separate laws for the regular peasants and the Muslim immigrants. That is the case elsewhere, like that Muslim polygamist in Britain who got let off for speeding and the ones who can have extra benefits if they have extra wives. Lefties are happy to condemn and smear all Christians when some do crap like that, but when it comes to the religion of tolerance and peace, they're surprisingly tolerant and happy to bend over. If it was Sego, you'd find that the government would have to be shamed into enforcing its laws and such.

Sarko's government will do what its supposed to, enforce the law across the board, not selectively. Sorry 'hip student crowd', you lot are usually whining for some meddling socialist policy or other, it's like living in your not-so-hip father's house, if you want him to pick up the tab all the time, eventually you'll have to do as he says, so choke on that. Perhaps you can hold out until the French get tired of working hard and paying less tax or something, they'll vote for Sego then and she'll usher in the nanny state and the parasites will return in the name of social justice. Then you just need to burn some more cars, scream racism, xenophobia and what not and she'll promptly roll over and you can go ahead.

Obama's now-famous remark: "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" has been much noted. Google has over 19,000 mentions of it. And the message taken from it has generally been that Obama is a haughty elitist who does not like to be questioned. I think that there is much more than that to it, however. Read the following report from last month to put it in context:

Early morning trainers and exercisers at the Greenville, Miss., YMCA on Mississippi primary day last Tuesday got a taste of Sen. Barack Obama's reclusiveness, which the traveling press corps has learned to accept.

After speaking at Tougaloo College on Monday night, Obama went to the "Y" at 6:30 a.m. for a workout. He greeted nobody and did not respond when people there called out to him. That aloofness has been the pattern in the Democratic presidential candidate's behavior toward reporters who cover him.

After finishing his workout, Obama returned to his gregarious campaign mode with a visit to black-owned Buck's restaurant in Greenville before leaving the state. He won Mississippi comfortably against Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The above quote and the waffle remark are both telling us the same thing: That Obama has difficulty keeping up his "nice guy" image. Keeping it up quite simply wears him out. It is not who he really is so keeping up that image tires him and he just HAS to rest from it. It is not who he really is.

And as someone who has studied psychopathy (I have a couple of academic journal articles on the subject) that is very familiar. Psychopaths also typically present a "nice guy" image -- something that sucks in the females wholesale. The psychopath says and does all the right things and people promptly put their trust in him. And then when they least expect it, he "goes bad" on them. "Why did he do that?" is the typical distressed response, "He was so nice and then he went and did ....".

The sucker in the story gets very thoroughly betrayed and has no clue as to why the psychopath suddenly changed. The answer, of course, is that the nice guy act was all a pretense in the first place and because it was not genuine the psychopath just could not keep it up for long. The "change" that distressed the sucker was the mask being dropped and the psychopath reverting to his true type.

And that is what we see in both reports of Obama's behaviour above. By the time he got to his waffle he just could not keep up his act, even under the full glare of media scrutiny. He HAD to have a rest from acting. So the Obama we see on the campaign trail is just a false front for the very dismal soul that lies beneath it. If America elects Obama, it will not get what it voted for. It will get a horror. An entire nation will have been conned.

Bill Clinton is a psychopath too. He too is known for suddenly "losing it" at times. But Slick Willy was led around by his penis. Obama will probably be led around by the hate that he sucked up in listening to 20 years of Jeremiah Wright's preaching.

Daily Mail - Savaging Labour's prisons policy, Glyn Travis told how inmates benefit from satellite television, free telephone calls, breakfast in bed and officers who treat them with kid gloves for fear of breaching their human rights. Mr Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, warned that every jail in the land was overcrowded and under-resourced, and that the entire system was "snowballing out of control". Mr Travis said: "Drugs are coming into prisons at a rate that's so dramatic that drugs in prisons are actually cheaper than on the outside. "There's a classic case in Yorkshire where members of the public were climbing over the prison walls to take drugs into the prison.

Mr Travis added: "It tells me there's something wrong in society when people are breaking into prisons to bring in drugs and prostitutes but the prisoners are quite happy to stay inside." He told Talk Sport radio that taxpayers would be "appalled" if they knew of the conditions enjoyed by criminals, including Britain's most notorious rapists, murderers and paedophiles. "Prisoners receive a wage for being in prison," he said. "They receive a bed, a TV in all cells, Sky television in most areas for recreational use, free telephones, breakfast in bed on many occasions, cash bonuses for good behaviour, and prison staff are forced to deal with them in such a subservient way it's ridiculous.

And some of us have the audacity to criticize America for the way they treat criminals, we whinge and whine at America because they still execute their scum. We scoff at them because they still insist on carrying weapons to defend themselves. Look at the rest of us, we gave up our guns and did away with capital punishment and what have we got, we are not free, our streets are gone, our taxes pay for scumbags like this and we can never be rid of them. Have a read of this, we can't even walk the streets our grandfathers fought and died for. Just the other evening as I was about to head out for work, I saw that some notorious gangster who is in jail now gets to watch day time TV and live his life happily in jail. What the heck people, like you I'm busting my ass everyday and some nights so this asshole can have a nice soft life on the inside watching TV and whatever else after killing people!

At least it's not as bad as the lot of the British taxpayer, after 10 years of leftist squandering, their scum like rapists and pedophiles are living soft and fat in their jails and when they definitely will get out because apart from Americans the rest of us don't have the stomach to kill such filth, they'll continue their worthless lives suckling on the taxpayers teat. Blasted, cursed, wretched parasites the lot of them, I thank God that America is a nation that allows people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County deal with scumbags and they still have the death penalty and they still allow their citizens the right to bear arms and defend themselves when they need to. Perhaps one day the rest of us might get pissed off with all these leeches hanging off our backs and wake the hell up.

There is already one post about Anzac day on this blog but I would like to add a few words directed particularly at overseas readers

Australia's main national day today, when we remember members of our families who died in the many wars where Australian troops have lent a hand to other people far away across the sea. And in one case -- the war with Japan -- we were actually threatened ourselves.

In WWII, the Japanese were stopped in their advance through New Guinea towards Australia by the CMF -- the "weekend warriors" of whom I was myself once a part. There are few weekend warriors any more. I myself served full-time for part of my enlistment and half of the American army in Iraq is made up of reservists. The CMF is now referred to simply as the "Reserves".

Commemoration of Anzac day traditionally includes attendance at an interdenominational "Dawn service" -- held at dawn to commemorate the time when the original Anzacs landed at Gallipoli. After that there is a huge march through the city featuring "ex-diggers" (former members of the military) and their relatives. It is a long time since I have attended the service or watched the march but my heart nonetheless goes out to the families who have lost loved-ones. Perhaps fortunately, the relatives I lost were distant ones whom I never knew personally.

But this evening I will do one very Australian thing: I will attend a family BBQ to celebrate a birthday. The picture above is from Brisbane's shrine of remembrance. It is most pleasing to note that the commemoration seems to get bigger every year -- with many young people involved.

The heading above appears today on an article about the progression of the Olympic torch through Canberra. But it could have been about lots of other places as well. The "right to speak" that was extinguished was in fact the right to harass and disrupt a legitimate and peaceful sporting activity. Like most people in the Western world, I think that the Chinese occupation of Tibet is deplorable but that the authorities have the obligation to erect barricades etc to protect the torch-bearers from aggressive Leftist demonstrators is also undisputable to any reasonable person. It was not the right to speak that was suppressed but the right to make an arsehole of yourself.

If attention-seeking Leftist demonstrators could be relied on to act peacefully, there would no doubt have been the right and opportunity to hold up any number of placards etc. but we know how peaceful the preachers of peace in fact are so if anybody suppressed the right of people to speak it was the thugs who made countermeasures to their aggression necessary.

And that the Chinese sent counter-demonstrators to protest against the protestors is entirely proper in a democratic society. It's an inevitable consequence of taking your politics to the street. But it was not the Chinese who initiated that. Both sides are entitled to their say and if one side uses disruptive tactics the same is to be expected back.

The writer of the article is however a depressed and alcoholic drug abuser so perhaps he can be forgiven his stupidity and bias. How a piece so lacking in balance and perspective got published in "The Australian" is the real mystery. I guess it was seen as something that would give Leftists a horn.

So what? Other than ensuring the Greatest Show on Earth will continue, does it matter that Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama Tuesday in Pennsylvania by nine-plus points? Barack Obama is the nominee. No matter how many kicks the rest of us find in such famously fun primary states as Indiana and South Dakota, it's going to be McCain versus Obama in 2008.

I believe the cement set around the Clinton coffin last Friday. The Obama campaign announced it had received the support of former Sens. Sam Nunn of North Carolina and David Boren of Oklahoma. Both are what some of us nostalgically call Serious Democrats. They represent what the party was, but is no more: sensible on national security, spending and middle-class values. Obama receiving their imprimatur is like hands reaching out from the graves of FDR, JFK and LBJ to announce: "Enough is enough. This man is your nominee. Go forth and fight with the Republicans." Make no mistake: Superdelegates with sway took notice.....

Sam Nunn and David Boren by political temperament should be in her camp. Instead, they threw in with Obama, who calls his campaign "post-partisan," a ludicrous phrase. The blowback at ABC's debate makes clear that Obama is the left's man. So what did Messrs. Nunn and Boren see? The biggest event was the Clinton Abandonment. In a campaign of surprises, none has been more breathtaking than the falling away of Clinton supporters, loyalists . . . and friends. Why? Money. Barack Obama's mystical pull on people is nice, but nice in modern politics comes after money. Once Barack proved conclusively that he could raise big-time cash, the Clintons' strongest tie to their machine began to unravel. Today he's got $42 million banked. She's got a few million north of nothing....

Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania prove it won't be easy. Barack Obama himself said Tuesday night, "I'm not perfect." He heads to the nomination freighted with all the familiar Democratic tensions that keep a Sam Nunn off the ballot: race and gender obsessions, semipacifism and you bet, bitter white voters. So be it. For modern Democrats, winning the White House always requires some sort of magic to get near 50%. For the Clintons, that bag is empty. The Democrats have a new magician. It's Obama.

Brisbane Times - Constable Rawson James Armitage and his girlfriend Michelle Renee Dodge were beaten by almost a dozen youths as they walked on Dutton Street, Coolangatta, in November last year. Crown prosecutor Stuart Shearer today told the court several of the accused had jumped on the constable's head as he lay unconscious on the ground, in what the prosecutor labelled a "foolish and gutless act". He said tufts of Ms Dodge's hair were pulled out. In a victim impact statement read to the court, Const Armitage said the attack had forever changed his life.

"Every time I close my eyes I can recall fists hitting my face and parts of my body," Const Armitage said in the statement. "Words could not describe how Michelle must have felt seeing me on the ground with a pool of blood around my head." Although Const Armitage had returned to work, he said it was an ongoing battle to maintain confidence in his abilities. Ms Dodge said in her statement that she would require ongoing medical treatment.

Seems kinda serious don't you think, couple of scumbags jumping on your loved one's head, lucky to be alive, you'd think so wouldn't you. Couple of years in a chain-gang picking up trash and actually contributing to society sounds more than reasonable don't you think. Sorry schmucks, the joke's on you suckers. It's a new-age world we live in down under, not allowed to carry a weapon to defend yourself, cos you're safer that way, besides you can rely on the justice system to do its bit right? Wrong again folks, we've moved beyond all that mean, nasty incarceration business, that's like so old century, now it's all positive thoughts, kumbaya and holds hands, so this is what passes for justice now.

Yahoo!7 News - A teenage girl accused of instigating a vicious beating of an off-duty police officer and his girlfriend on the Gold Coast has walked free from court. Slockee was the alleged ringleader of almost a dozen youths who kicked and punched the couple, inflicting severe bruising and lacerations. Southport District Court Judge John Newton placed Slockee on two years' probation, noting she had already spent 91 days in custody.

Oh boo-freaking-hoo, poor baby already spent a whole 91 days in a jail, oh somebody cry me an freaking river. What is this western world coming to, that's like spending your life in a Siberian gulag, oh my godless, how could they! Poor, poor baby, I hope she isn't scarred for life and will still be able to make her way to the welfare office to live out the rest of her worthless life in peace, like every worthless parasite aspires to. In all honesty why don't they just charge the policeman for surviving and put a bullet in his head, finish the job you know. At the very least, just confiscate his meager possessions and hand them over to make up for the 91 days the worm had to spend locked up. Stop pretending to give a damn cos they obviously don't. Justice my ass, bwahahahaha what a joke, look elsewhere folks, we're all outta justice here, sale's over, stocks are finished, just eff off somewhere else if you want any.

The Returned Services League has called for military personnel and veterans carry to be allowed to carry their medals with them on commercial flights. RSL national president Major General Bill Crews said he knew of at least one incident in which a veteran was told by airport security he could not bring medals on board an aircraft because of the security risk.

Maj-Gen Crews said airports should show more trust. "Airport security and the government in particular should recognise that people carrying medals are those whose own service is distinguished by those medals and who have the trust of the community," Maj-Gen Crews said on ABC radio. "And surely there can be an exemption made because of the importance of having those medals with you for various occasions."

Maj-Gen Crews said many veterans did not wish to place their medals in checked-in luggage because they were afraid it could get lost. Veterans travelling to funerals often travelled lightly and carried only their medals and cabin luggage, he said. "Those who dictate the security arrangements at airfields ... should make it clear that an exemption applies for those carrying medals of their own," Maj-Gen Crews said.

"A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy. "We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."

An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.

well....maybe:"China torch security will 'respond to threat'A SHOWDOWN between China's paramilitary "flame attendants" and Australian police looms for tomorrow's torch relay after Beijing organisers insist the guards have a security role to play.

Canberra's relay organisers were humiliated today when, at a press conference unveiling their final plans, a Chinese official flatly contradicted Australia's position that China would butt out of local police business.

Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games spokesman Qu Yingpu declared the blue tracksuit-clad flame attendants - branded thugs for their heavy-handed tactics on earlier legs - would take matters into their own hands if a torchbearer was threatened."Why were these heavies granted visas? And I'd love to know what the Oz police have been told at their briefing....

Sunspot activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that - far from warming - the globe is about to return to an Ice Age. Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory showed there were currently no spots on the sun.

He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C. "This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Dr Chapman writes in The Australian today. "If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."

The Bureau of Meteorology says temperatures in Australia have been warmer than the 1960-90 average since the late 1970s, barring a couple of cooler years, and are now 0.3C higher than the long-term average.

A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark. Some scientists believe a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak - during low sunspot activity - the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.

But scientists from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research published a report in 2006 that showed the sun had a negligible effect on climate change. The researchers wrote in the journal Nature that the sun's brightness varied by only 0.07per cent over 11-year sunspot cycles, and that that was far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

Dr Chapman proposes preventive, or delaying, moves to slow the cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective. "My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades," he writes.

Canada has just experienced the coldest winter and the heaviest snowfalls since 1970-1, which was called a once in a thousand years event. Another 18 centimetres of snow would set an all time record. A Kingston newspaper had a marvellous cartoon of a tough old Canadian, rugged up against the cold and hacking the ice off the windscreen of his car. The caption read "Global warming my a."!

In China the Chinese New Year coincided with a fierce cold snap and snow storms which prevented many city workers returning to their villages for the celebrations. Police had to deal with the ensuing riots. London has just experienced snow at Easter.

The world is much bigger than both China and Canada combined, which might be the exceptions to the new rule of man-made global warming, but they are inconvenient facts for the climate change bandwagon. And it is an intolerant bandwagon with loud exaggerated claims that the issue is settled and that an unchallenged consensus among scientists confirms the hypothesis of dangerous humanly caused global warming. In fact the issue is far from settled. Politicians sceptical of these claims would need unusual courage to resist the strong tides of public opinion. However the rest of us are not so constrained and we should consider all the available information. Three points are of some significance.

Last December more than 100 prominent international scientists, some of them members of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned the U.N. that attempting to control the earth's climate was "ultimately futile". So did 500 experts in Manhattan in March. Fighting climate change was distracting governments from helping the most vulnerable citizens adapt to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever they might prove to be. Futile attempts to prevent global climate change would be a tragic misallocation of resources, they claimed.

Secondly none of the natural changes observed with glaciers, sea-levels and species migration is outside the bounds of known variability, including the warming of 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade in the late twentieth century. But the 1930s decade was warmer than the 1990s. Most importantly the global temperature has not increased since 2001. Global warming has ceased (New Statesman 19/12/2007). This finding invalidates the global warming hypotheses because the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to increase and the temperature should be increasing too. It isn't.

The last point to be acknowledged is that today's computer models cannot predict climate over long periods because there are too many unknowns and variables. We should never forget that while computers are miracles of human ingenuity, able to assimilate extraordinary amounts of information in the briefest time, they are also limited, cannot think for themselves and are totally obedient to their last human master. More than this is needed to predict the future.

China Daily - The country's rural population is poised to have a larger say in its political, economic and social issues, with the coming amendment of the Election Law giving equal representation to residents in the countryside and urban areas. The amendment has been scheduled for December, an annual legislative agenda of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee released Tuesday stated. The present Election Law stipulates that the number of people represented by a rural NPC deputy is four times that of an urban deputy. Many academics have argued that such a rule is unfair to the country's 700 million rural residents, as they do not have the same say in congress as their urban counterparts.

Correct me if I'm wrong folks, but I thought Communism was about the peasants, overthrowing the filthy bourgeoisie and freeing the proletariat or the peasants. Sorry, I get confused with all these fancy terms, with so many corpses and gulags in its wake, it's hard not to get distracted. I thought Communism was supposed to give them the power to lord over the filthy bourgeoisie and all that. So how come, after all these decades, the peasants are only just getting closer to their fair representation, let alone the only representation, which is what they're supposed to be getting right? Image thanks to Yahoo Images.

By AR - Al Gore is despairing over the lack of action taken to combat global climate warming since his alarming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. He tells the London Sun that despite being scared witless, the public still prefers to deal with real issues:

“But then if you give them a list of 25 or 30 issues and ask them to rank them in order of seriousness, climate change comes at the bottom or near the bottom.I remember one poll where it came under dog litter."

If only Al Gore could outrank dog-turds, maybe we'd do something about the climate.

These guys have some right to be annoyed. If Muslims and blacks cannot be criticized, why should criticism of the Chinese be allowed?

I personally think people should be free to call China's leadership a "bunch of goons and thugs." Why? Because they are. But could I say that about blacks? No way! Even though blacks are something like 9 times more likely to commit violent crimes than whites are.

Though pinning items one and five on the Kruddite alone is a little unfair, he can certainly wear the rest with pride.

Looking good fellas, looking good. . .

PS: and they’ve just effectively slammed the state of the ALP-governed States, thanks to the weekend’s 2020 Sumofallidiots ALP-left blabberthon.

And thanks for the admission (finally) – it’s high time you ‘fessed up to your constituency (because we’ve known it all along).

On the brighter side, it’ll be an absolute hoot to watch the Federal ALP have to throw the ALP States to the wolves, not to mention the back-peddling that’ll be going on from ‘the-buck-stops-with-me’ Ker_Rudd.

News.com.au - CHINESE guards will "use their bodies" to protect the Olympic flame from protesters in Canberra, China's ambassador to Australia says. But tonight Zhang Junsai said the staff would play a role in keeping the flame secure. "Their role is to make sure that the flame will not go out,'' Mr Junsai told the Nine Network.

As late as last night Mr Rudd reaffirmed his position that the Chinese torch escorts - dubbed "thugs'' by one London Olympic official - would play no role in security. "The advice that I have got from the Australian Federal Police is that the physical security of the Olympic torch will be provided by Australian security officials only,'' Mr Rudd told ABC Television last night.

Well PM Rudd, either this is the price for your insolence the other day in China or it appears that you mis-read the advice from HQ in Beijing or you thought it was for someone else, it's the one titled 'For our Australian Lackey'. Am I being too mean here? Let me know folks, I kinda feel bad calling him that, it's not really a dig at our PM, but more a dig at the leftist scum who so gleefully labeled John Howard an arse-licker and George Bush's Deputy. I thought I'd return the favor and call their man a Chinese lackey. I just thought I'd speak in a language they [lefties] would understand, OK I'll go away now and think about what I've said.

Daily Mail - With his rubbish collected only once a fortnight, Gareth Corkhill's wheelie bin was so full the lid wouldn't shut. And for that, the father of four finds himself with a criminal record. Magistrates convicted the 26-year-old bus driver after hearing evidence that the lid was four inches ajar, which is against rules to stop bins overflowing. He was ordered to pay £210 - a week's wages - after he declined to pay an on-the-spot fine imposed by the local council's bin police, who visited him wearing stab-proof vests and carrying photographic evidence of his crime.

To add insult to injury he was told to pay a £15 victim surcharge to help victims of violence - despite there being no victim - and threatened with prison if he failed to pay. Rapists, murderers and other violent criminals who have earned a jail sentence rather than a fine are immune from the penalty. Yesterday the council, Copeland in Cumbria, said that Mr Corkhill's family had caused problems for "the battle to reduce waste". For failing to pay his fine Mr Corkhill, from Whitehaven, will now have a criminal record which he will have to disclose if he applies for a job, credit or a mortgage over the next five years.

And the dumb clucks wonder why people are dumping and burning their trash in illegal fires. The stupidity of local councils never ceases to amaze me. And it shouldn't come as any surprise that they are usually dominated by greenies and lefties. Don't think this sort of crap won't come to Australia, I have already heard of certain councils putting microchips on their bins and trying to weasel and slither in various ways of monitoring your trash. Hopefully us Aussies will tell these nannying, meddling, sniveling parasites to jump off the nearest cliff and take their devices with them.

"Branch stacking" is a well-known ALP pursuit and Kevvy's selection of "delegates" for his ideas summit shows that he is a dab hand at it too. A few years ago, two thirds of Australians voted in favour of the monarchy. So did two thirds of Kevvy's delegates feel that way too? Read on:

Monarchists and some participants have left the 2020 Summit less than impressed. Those against severing ties with the Crown yesterday called the summit stacked after it was used to place the republic on the national agenda. A staggering 98 per cent of 2020 summiteers were confessed republicans. At the weekend, GetUp activist Brett Solomon asked those in the governance stream if anyone opposed a republic. Only one delegate, Liberal senator George Brandis, declared himself a monarchist. Former governor-general Sir William Deane [A well-known bleeding heart] abstained. "This is a better result than Mugabe has managed in the Zimbabwean elections," monarchist David Flint said.

It has also been revealed at least 10 per cent of participants were members of GetUp, the Left-leaning activist group. But it wasn't just the monarchists who were disillusioned. Former Australian Medical Association president Mukesh Haikerwal said many good ideas at the summit had been "lost in translation". "What was discussed on the groups, a lot dropped off or was unrecognisable," Dr Haikerwal said. "But more, some ideas got extremely high prominence when they were in no shape or form agreed to."

Clean Up Australia founder Ian Kiernan said the summit was a success but some good ideas had been ignored. "I was shut out at one stage," Mr Kiernan said. "I was told: 'You've had enough say'. I didn't appreciate that." Mr Kiernan also criticised the coal industry lobbyists in the environment group. "The coal industry is made up of multinationals, which mostly couldn't give a damn about the place," he said.

ANZ economist Saul Eslake said he enjoyed his weekend in the creative stream. But Mr Eslake expressed concern the event had been taken over by professional management consultants in the facilitators' roles.

Melbourne barrister Julian Burnside [A well-known Lefty], in the governance stream, said the summit went extraordinarily well. "There was excitement about it all, including from people with whom I would not normally be agreeing on things," Mr Burnside said.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night reaffirmed his commitment to a republic. "The Australia of the 21st century will be a republic," he told the ABC's 7.30 Report. Mr Rudd said he would proceed slowly. "We lost the last referendum nearly 10 years ago," he said. "We don't want to lose the next one." [The people must be made to vote correctly!]

"EDDIE Spowart was stabbed to death because he didn't smoke and couldn't give a cigarette to a gang of youths who approached him at a train station yesterday.

Horrified friends told The Daily Telegraph that the 54-year-old had been on the phone when the group of African males approached him at Granville Train Station about 12.45am.

They asked him for a cigarette but when the Fijian qualified fitter, who moved to Australian in 1989, told them to go away because he didn't smoke things turned nasty, his long-time friend Tony Chand said.

He was stabbed several times in his thigh, stomach and underneath his shoulder."News.comNo, Eddie was NOT killed because he didn't have a cigarette--he was killed because multiculti, leftist utopian effing morons refuse to believe that there are some cultures which are incompatible with Western societies.I'm willing to bet that these youths were Somalis--and Somalia produces some of the thickest, most violent scumbags known to man. EVERYWHERE they emigrate has problems with them.Their "culture" is unmanageable, using our soft and ineffectual system of law and policing and in any case, until the media begin to clearly identify the problem and force politicians to act the police have one hand tied behind their backs and will never get on top of this.Naturally, the usual bleeding-heart dishonest leftards will bleat and witter about racism and collective punishment and poor social conditions yadayadayada, but since they're the bastards who caused this problem in the first place, those comments are just so much background noise. The chatter of adolescent monkeys. Deport the "African youths" and throw in an equal number of leftards as an example to the rest--let's see how their multiculti theories fare in Somalia.

Or academic idiots. Or shameless prostitutes. Whatever....."Top uni's Saudi bankrollA PROMINENT Australian university practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3m, even telling the ambassador it could keep secret elements of the controversial deal.

Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that Griffith University - described by vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor as the "university of choice" for Saudis - offered the embassy an opportunity to reshape the Griffith Islamic Research Unit during its campaign to get some "extra noughts" added to Saudi cheques.

The revelation comes despite a claim last year by Ross Homel - then director of Griffith's key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance, which manages the Islamic unit - that the university did not chase money from the embassy and that the $100,000 down payment was offered with "no strings" attached.""Ethics"? Bawaaahahaha!!...these clowns wouldn't know what ethics were if they were bitten on the backside by them.

I am rather pleased that some Bible-oriented Christians are at last taking Christ's command seriously and celebrating the Passover instead of the pagan Easter. My entire Scripture blog was devoted to noting how far away most Christians have drifted from what the New Testament actually says. Michael Medved comments wisely below:

Rabbi Mark Glickman of the very liberal Reform branch of Judaism recently wrote a Seattle Times column decrying Christian congregations that celebrate their own Passover Seders. Rabbi Glickman claims the Seder was developed long after the Exodus events it commemorates, and was supposed to convey powerful anti-Christian messages, making Christian participation inappropriate.

In truth, there's nothing in the ancient formulation of the Passover Haggadah-the book of Seder liturgy-that disrespects or contradicts Christianity or Jesus, and most Jews passionately disagree with Rabbi Glickman. Retelling the story Exodus and affirming Jewish faith doesn't amount to an attack on Christianity - any more than affirming Christian faith amounts to an attack on the Old Testament or Judaism.

The two religions certainly disagree on key theological points, but share a commitment to remembering God's deliverance from Egyptian bondage as a liberating moment in human history. Christian rediscovery of the Jewish roots of Christianity is actually good for Jews, Christians and humanity.

SMH - KEVIN RUDD will spend the next six months sifting through more than 100 ideas for the nation's future, ranging from accelerating an overhaul of federation to making it compulsory to eat fruit at school and encouraging lazy office workers to use the stairs. The economic group recommended the biggest review of the tax system in 25 years - an idea the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, appeared to embrace. However, ideas from other groups included five new taxes and seven new inquiries or commissions. These taxes included a proportion of stamp duties on house sales being used to help the homeless, a volumetric tax on alcohol to combat alcoholism, a tax to encourage public transport use, and a new tax on alcohol, junk food and cigarettes to pay for the creation of a national preventive health agency.

For someone who was brimming with "fresh ideas" and "new leadership" just months ago, he seems really quite bereft of the very things he was claiming and our leftie media also seems completely uninterested in it, makes you wonder whose side they're really on eh. I also wonder what Kevvie is going to do for the next six months, how ever is he going to look busy and like he's actually doing something. Perhaps it'll take six months to come up with a creative way of forcing youngsters to eat fruit or else, to get office fatties to take the stairs or else and how to tax you even more without sounding too totalitarian. But wait folks, there's more some coming, lefties don't have the reputation of high taxation for nothing you know.

SMH - Nor was the symbolism of holding the gathering in the Government party room at Parliament House as speaker after speaker advocated the need for the arts and creativity to move from the margins to centre stage. Education was seen as a key to realising this, the group calling for a national school curriculum with compulsory creative, visual and performing arts subjects. New ways of funding the arts were seen as a priority, and suggestions on how to do this included the introducing a HECS scheme for young and emerging artists and a national endowment fund - a mix of public funding and private philanthropy. Also suggested was funding via tax incentives, a 1 per cent creativity dividend from all government departments for investment in the arts - and the reintroduction of death duties.

I don't think they'll be making arts and such compulsory in schools, that was probably just thrown in there as a bargaining chip, what's more important is access to your tax dollar. So whether you are interested in the arts or whether the art produced is actually liked by anyone is irrelevant, you peasants just need to be taxed until you learn to appreciate it. Whatever ideas are embraced by your glorious PM in six months will be funded by you lot, so get to work now. You can hardly expect a rabble of lefties to gather under one roof on your dollar and not come up with some creative ways to spend even more of your money now can you.

SMH - A national drive to halt the death penalty in the US has been defeated in the Supreme Court, with the justices ruling that lethal injections, if properly administered, are a "humane" means of executing a condemned prisoner. By a surprising 7-2 margin, the court rejected a constitutional attack on the main method of carrying out the death penalty across the US. Its ruling cleared the way for executions to resume after a seven-month delay. Since October, officials and judges in several states have put executions on hold while awaiting the outcome of the case decided on Wednesday.

Good on ya America, glad to see that justice will deal with the evildoers. Now if those states could hurry up and get on with it, that would be great, not only would they be saving hard-working taxpayers some money, they'd also be saving innocent lives, around 74 for each scumbag they send to hell.

Wall Street Journal - More precisely, our recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year. For any society concerned about human life, that type of evidence is something that should be taken very seriously.

With this 2020 summit going on in Australia and this yearning for fresh ideas, I have one. Can we outsource part of our justice system to the USA. Since we don't have the stomach to do the right thing with evil scumbags, why don't we send them over to the US, for a fee off course, so they can dispense with them. Think about it, it would only be the worst of the worst, you can have an extra trial or something if you want to ensure that we're not offing the wrong guy. After all we have the stomach to allow tens of thousands of unborn babies to be aborted every year who have done absolutely nothing wrong so why not kill those who have killed other people, the worst of the worst? Besides there is the self interest angle folks, wouldn't you want to be one of those 74 who get to live, I know I do.

When I launched the TalkClimateChange forums last year, I was initially worried as to where I would find people who didn’t believe in global warming. I had planned to create a furious debate, but in my experience global warming was such a universally accepted issue that I expected to have to dredge the slums of the internet in order to find a couple of deniers who could keep the argument thriving.

That prediction soon proved inaccurate:

The first few days were slow going, but following a brief write-up of my site by Junk Science I was swamped by climate skeptics who did a good job of frightening off the few brave Greens who slogged out the debate with. Whilst there was a lot of rubbish written, the truth was that they didn’t so much frighten the Greens away - they comprehensively demolished them with a more in depth understanding of the science, cleverly thought out arguments, and some very smart answers ... I didn’t believe a word of it, but I had to admit that these guys were good ...

In short, and I am sorry to say it, anti-greens (Reds, as we call them) appear to be more willing to comment, more structured, more able to quote peer reviewed research, more apparently rational and apparently wider read and better informed."But he didn't believe a word of the counter-arguments anyway. Does any sane person seriously doubt that the whole global warming hysteriafest is a beat-up and a religion?

A reporter reports his own ideas as the Pope's. Post below recycled from Gateway Pundit. See the original for links

Pope Benedict spoke to the United Nations General Assembly today. The AP religious writer Eric Gorski reported this on the pope's speech:

Pope Benedict XVI told diplomats at the United Nations on Friday that respect for human rights was the key to solving many of the world's problems, while cautioning that international cooperation was threatened by "the decisions of a small number." The pontiff, addressing the U.N. General Assembly on his first papal trip to the U.S., said the organization's work is vital. But he raised concerns that power is concentrated among just handful of players. "Multilateral consensus," he said, speaking in French, "continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a small number." The world's problems call for collective interventions by the international community, he said.

Now if you read through the pope's speech (As I did twice) you will not see anything about "power concentrated among just handful of players." It's also not clear where the AP came up with the "multilateral consensus" statement, either. This would have been surprising coming from a man they call "God's Rottweiler" because he is considered to be such a strong enforcer of the faith.

What Benedict did speak on was human rights- rules that do not limit freedom (not socialism). He also emphasized religious freedom. He did not, as the AP suggested, give some kind of socialist US-bashing manifesto. Here is the transcript of Pope Benedict's speech today to the United Nations.

The most important segment of his speech dealt with religious freedom. This is something the pope has spoken about recently with the Saudi Kingdom. Religious persecution is a frequent theme in his speeches. Pope Benedict urged UN member states to value the right of religious freedom:

"Human rights, of course, must include the right to religious freedom, understood as the expression of a dimension that is at once individual and communitarian - a vision that brings out the unity of the person while clearly distinguishing between the size of the citizen and that of the believer. The activity of the United Nations in recent years has ensured that public debate gives space to viewpoints inspired by a religious vision in all its dimensions, including ritual, worship, education, dissemination of information and the freedom to profess religion and choose .

It is inconceivable, then, that believers should have to suppress a part of themselves - their faith - in order to be active citizens. It should never be necessary to deny God in order to enjoy one's rights. The rights associated with religion are all the more in need of protection if they are considered to clash with a prevailing secular ideology or religious positions with majority of an exclusive nature.

The full guarantee of religious liberty can not be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order. Indeed, they actually do so, for example through their influential and generous involvement in a vast network of initiatives which extend from Universities, scientific institutions and schools to health care agencies and charitable organizations in the service of the poorest and most marginalized.

Refusal to recognize the contribution to society that is rooted in the religious dimension and in the quest for the Absolute - by its nature, expressing communion between persons - would effectively privilege an individualistic approach, and would fragment the unity of the person.

Behind our "Western" heart

As the name of this blog implies, we have always welcomed contributors and readers from anywhere in the Western world. But there is also something else behind the name. The blog originated in Australia and most contributions come from Australia. And that is very fitting. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart -- and you will see that in the posts appearing here. Events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Some brief observations about Leftism

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)